G-Rebels is a science fiction flying battle game
Blog Andrew Joseph 16 Apr , 2025 0
I've been patrolling the sky since the 1980s and shooting down hostile aircraft in Sims flights, all the way back to a single green pixel in the original Sublogic Flight Simulator's Apple II. Since then I whipped Kilrathi on tiger claws, smashed the rebellion with a tie fighter, shot the Red Baron, the Red Baron, buzzing in the Microsoft Flight Simulator. So, having the opportunity to spend a few hours with the G-Rebels, this is a combination of a few things I really like: aviation, blade runners and an open-ended approach to gameplay. This fusion of designs will affect something weird, ambitious and potential, but I'm not sure if this has been tweaked to find its basis.
G-Rebels were set after climate disasters wiped out much of the world. Now you are one of many factions, flying an armed plane between the skyscrapers in Los Angeles. You can find enemies, traffickers and rogue replicas in the air. Yes, they are actually called replicas…I'm not a copyright law expert, so don't ask me how.
Now, vehicle-oriented games must meet the specific requirements of success: through the environment provided, the vehicles must be fun. This is where the G-Rebels problem begins: flying around is more of a tedious chore. Sometimes, it's even a hole.
G-Rebels calls your antenna a glider, but this description is not really accurate. Its closest to the real world simulation is a helicopter because you have the ability to wander anywhere. However, unlike real choppers, pilots don’t have the necessary hand and foot dance most of the time. Only turning or changing altitudes can quickly create huge pressure on the pilot. Instead, your antenna lingers effortlessly, scooters, and sweeps up, down and sideways like some flying first-person shooter Avatar. Things will feel very familiar if you've ever played the ancient FPS drop.
However, it's a long time to really master the X-Skyblade, which is strange because it's so forgiving to the vehicle. There is little power or gravity at work compared to flying SIM cards or even arcade shooting games like Star Wars Squadron. You can stop and shift speed from forward to upward in a second, but everything is weird and lacks ability. Your Skyblade has the processing characteristics of the sci-fi Nissan Versa: slow, reliable, predictable, anemia and total boredom. I've driven Nissan in real life and I don't need to bring its stable, dullness of value into my fantasy world.
The upgrade helps, especially about your gun and straight-line speed upgrades, although I still feel like I'm just updating the flying sedan to the flying minivan. Finally, the problem with G-Rebels is that while the vehicle style fits the aesthetics of blade runners, control and functionality are a bad match for near-conventional canyon flights. More considerations are needed for proximity warnings and spatial awareness, which are issues of increased task design. The event is just ahead of the escort duty and scheduled heading challenges, which are out of place designs that undermine most of the richness in the environment.
G-Rebels occur above a flooded world, with skyscrapers rising from synthetic islands and living in a narrow space between thundering waves and near-lasting clouds. In that space, wandering in other skyscrapers – some are benign, some are driven by evil enemies. The mission design is very simple: Go to Waypoints, look around, find the targets and blow them up without killing yourself.
There is a story, a plot, a character, etc., but I don't care much about it. The sound performance is stereotyped, the script is bad, and the tones of other pilots bring them ruthless rings, which leads me to believe they may have been produced by AI…which seems to confirm the steam page. This is disappointing.
I shouldn't talk about G-Rebels further without pointing out its biggest sin: the tightly matched Waypoint-waypoint-to-to-to-woint-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to I think as a species we have collectively agreed to stop these horrible parts in the game after Superman 64, but obviously the developers of G-Rebels don't agree. Why do some think that the ruthless vehicle I just learned to fly sprinted to five waypoints over and over again is a great gaming experience, which is beyond me.
Not disappointing is the gunfight, which feels like one of the most recognized aspects of G-Rebels. Fans of flight Sims and arcade flight shooting games will be very familiar with the basic modes available: short-range gun mode is available for struggle, and a longer range of missile systems can hit vast targets from distance in electronic locking. Both are well thought out. I found that with my brain, now almost instinctive Flying SIM programming is very effective. A slightly leading turn goal at close range usually ends with a solid hit rate. And adjust the working principle of lead at a distance. The missiles were powerful, but the guns were very interesting and I stuck to it to a large extent and poked out from behind the boulder building.
Your control panel and HUD are the win over features. The dashboard screen can confuse relative position and height and seems to alternate between providing too little or too much information. The instrument feels like it was designed to create a beautiful preview capture, rather than quickly providing the information pilots may need when flying between tall buildings in a thunderstorm.
You won't get a lot of traditional dog tail and energy tactics from flying games set within planetary atmosphere. Gravity is indeed not a factor, so the dog's battle is chase and debris compared to the gunfight between flying tanks. There are strategies to learn and use, but most of what you learn in other flying games doesn't apply. Often, shooting first and fastest is the best guarantee of victory.
The city itself has potential, but its current form largely offers nothing special in character. These buildings are rendered at a normal level, but hardly what you see feels unique, let alone life or real. More than any real life, the breathing world is a scene or stage made for video games.
G-Rebels may get very interesting, but it's still a work going on now. Cool, but not the usual fun. Mission and aircraft handling design still have a long way to go. You can see the potential for something pleasant, but these parts have not yet been fully integrated into a fascinating formula. I haven't seen the official release date for G-Rebels, but I hope the team has time to refine their ambitions and create well-tuned flight combat experiences that they obviously work hard to achieve.
Jared Petty is a former IGN editor who loves writing about how wonderful and stupid video games are. You can find him on the blues Blue Army plays PettyCommajared.
